The movie version of TV's worst superhero show, The Greatest American Hero, starts filming in July, says director Steven Herek (The Mighty Ducks). And Herek wants "name" actors to play the teacher who gets superpowers from an alien suit and his main nemesis. The good news: the movie version's synopsis actually has some potential to be way more interesting than the super-dull TV show.

In the movie version, just like on TV, Ralph Hinkley is a high-school history teacher chosen by aliens to defend humanity and wear a super-suit. But he loses the suit's instructions and flies around crashing into things. The movie also includes cranky FBI agent Bill Maxwell, a major supporting cast member in the TV version. The movie adds a villain, Harvey Lundy, who's another schoolteacher chosen by evil aliens to help them strip-mine the planet. Lundy and Hinkley wind up having a super-powered duel to the death. The movie also adds a love interest for Hinkley.

I rented the DVDs of the TV show a couple of years ago, and wound up bringing them back early, because the watching-water-boil storylines were so hard to sit through. But adding a supervillain, backed by his own set of aliens with their own agenda, gives the movie at least some potential to rise from awful to watchable. Maybe. [MovieWeb]